[1998-10-18-WWF-Judgment Day] The Undertaker vs Kane

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. Undertaker and Kane are really bit players in their own main event, as they should be. The crowd completely shits on the two, as Undertaker seemed to be losing heat by the week during this time. I think the problem here is that these two had no real issue to build up this match. Austin's involvement was the selling point, so everyone was just waiting on the finish. The same being true of Venis-Goldust shows an increase in Russo influence. Undertaker and Kane end up ditching the match and taking Austin out, which makes no sense at all until Undertaker decides to attack Kane from behind. Paul Bearer ends up turning on Kane and reuniting with Undertaker. Austin looks at Undertaker like there's no way in hell he's counting that fall. The two argue and Austin stuns him and hits him with a chair to a huge pop before counting both out and declaring himself the winner. That is a terrible PPV main event finish under normal circumstances, but they make up for it with the post-match where Austin challenges Vince McMahon to fire him. He walks all over the backstage area and can't find him anywhere. He finally gets Vince in the upper deck of the building, which is sort of a weird visual. Vince ends up firing Austin with the words "SCREW YOU, YOU'RE FIRED". The fired Austin promises that we haven't seen the last of him. I sense that they played his music to make clear this was an angle, although as I recall the WWF got a ton of complaint phone calls the next day from people who really thought Austin was fired.

[soup23]

Action here looked completely awful. Finish wasn't much better. Maybe all WWE PPV's in October are destined to end in shit. Vince is good on his promise to fire Austin as he gets pelted with garbage which is nice. I know what happens next in the story and I am interested to see if I think it makes enough sense as it would be a shame for this angle to go off the rails even ever so slightly based on the great stuff we have seen between these two this year.

[PeteF3]

Another match with cognitive dissonance between the storyline and the match layout. Austin's going from not giving a shit and not wanting to crown a new champion, to checking for submissions. Austin should be seated in a ringside chair downing Steveweisers and letting these two beat each other up. In the end, this is yet another proof that it isn't the title that's over, it is (or *should* be) the guy that's holding it. Paul Bearer comes out and we get maybe the first instance of the "guy prepares to hit somebody with an object, then turns around and shockingly hits the other guy" spot in the Russo Era that we'd see a million more times. It doesn't lead to much except it seems to officially put Undertaker and Bearer back together as full-fledged heels and set up Kane as a sympathetic babyface going forward.

 

Austin hunts Vince down backstage, unsuccessfully, though he does run into Owen Hart in an amusing moment ("I don't know, I'm retired.") McMahon then orders the video screen to be pulled up, and finally fires Austin. Huge heat for this, and Vince hesitates a bit before launching into his famous soundbite, which a creative person *might* be able to interpret as regret and a possible explanation for Shane re-hiring Austin only to screw him--but, we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we?